Best personal finance software

[Ready]

I've been a Quicken user for 20 years and still use it as my primary tracking tool. I do use Personal Capital to double check the data. I'm not clear how Personal Capital or Mint could be relied on exclusively though. Don't those products limit how much historical data you can look at?

If the online accounts being accessed no longer store your data, doesn't that mean you won't be able to see it in PC or Mint? If that doesn't both you, maybe it's fine. But I would not want a company archiving my data on their schedule.

Also, what if you routinely use a credit card, and then cancel it. If your account becomes disabled, don't you lose access to the historical data?

 

[segfault]

Another long-term Quicken user here. The Mac version of Quicken has been awful for as long as I can remember. When I switched to Mac, I used Boot Camp to keep a Windows XP install just so I could keep using the Windows version of Quicken. Now, I do the same thing using Oracle's VirtualBox software, which doesn't even require me to reboot the Mac. Currently running the 2012 version and will upgrade once it reaches the end of its lifecycle and the online features stop working.

I don't really use it for budgeting. I keep a separate Excel spreadsheet of my recurring monthly bills. Pretty much everything else goes on my credit card, so that's highly variable from month to month.

 

[NgineER]

Google Docs Spreadsheet

I am old fashioned too I guess.
My vote is on a spreadsheet, I update it once a month, takes about 20 minutes, and can separate purchases from one receipt into different categories to better keep track of spend. Doing it this way allows me to reliably keep track of expenditures year over year and more accurately budget for the future.

When I used quicken 10 years ago, I was not able to remove account transfers as a category that was dwarfing the real spending.
I used Mint about five years ago, but it did not allow access to my local credit union.

 

[Fishingmn]

When I used quicken 10 years ago, I was not able to remove account transfers as a category that was dwarfing the real spending.

You can take out transfers if you choose that option in the reporting. It does show them as a default but they are pretty easy to remove.

 

[W2R]

I am old fashioned too I guess.
My vote is on a spreadsheet[...]

I love using a spreadsheet because I spend less time battling requirements and limitations of the software, and more time getting the answers I want or need. I use Open Office, which is free.

I tried Quicken last year and still prefer Excel for some reason for the kinds of calculations and results that I want.

 

[braumeister]

still prefer Excel for some reason for the kinds of calculations and results that I want.

Yes, do whatever is necessary to get the results you want!
Reality, schmeality; I want my bottom line to look like THIS!



More seriously, I use my own spreadsheets too (although I love Moneydance for day to day tracking). Apple's Numbers spreadsheet (their version of Excel) started out pretty basic, but they have gradually added features to the point that it's now almost equal to Excel but easier to use (for me anyway).

 

[W2R]

Yes, do whatever is necessary to get the results you want!
Reality, schmeality; I want my bottom line to look like THIS!



More seriously, I use my own spreadsheets too (although I love Moneydance for day to day tracking). Apple's Numbers spreadsheet (their version of Excel) started out pretty basic, but they have gradually added features to the point that it's now almost equal to Excel but easier to use (for me anyway).

I have used Excel (or now, Open Office) daily for the past 25 years, so I feel at home with it. And actually knowing exactly how something is calculated never did any harm, assuming one is seeking reality.

 

[imoldernu]

Embarassing... We don't track anything except the bank account balance. Our bills are stabilized, so a quick glance tells if anything unusal happens.

Filing system - spindle for unpaid... usually empty... drawer for paid... another drawer for receipts.

Works for us.

 

[ERD50]

Embarassing... We don't track anything except the bank account balance. Our bills are stabilized, so a quick glance tells if anything unusal happens.

Filing system - spindle for unpaid... usually empty... drawer for paid... another drawer for receipts.

Works for us.

Works for us too. We have only two accounts that bills are paid from. I track the monthly WD from those - that is how much we spend. Though I do put those in a spreadsheet, and spread a few annual payments out across the 12 months to smooth them.

-ERD50

 

[iam21177]

I use a spreadsheet too. It's changed a little from the first version I've set up 15 years ago. I use Mint to get my husband's spending as he has his own credit card, even though we have the same bank account.

 

[Tailgate]

+1 on YNAB... excellent for tracking expenses vs your budget. Good reports. We are early into retirement so expenses are top of mind. Also use Mint as a snapshot of accounts at the bank and brokerage firms.

 

[CoolChange]

I had been a happy Moneydance user for many years; but, I have recently switched to KMyMoney as part of my personal quest to go completely Open Source.

KMyMoney is the best of the Open Source alternatives for personal use that I have found. If I ever start my own consulting or software business, I may move to http://www.gnucash.org/; but, for now, that is overkill for me.

 

[Derslickmeister]

Excel spreadsheet here. I use it for tracking spending, tracking investments and savings and net worth as well as projecting my ER date as a added bonus I've added a tab that will show my daughter exactly where everything is and how much to collect in the event of our untimely demise...

 

[Hermit]

Excel spreadsheet here. I use it for tracking spending, tracking investments and savings and net worth as well as projecting my ER date as a added bonus I've added a tab that will show my daughter exactly where everything is and how much to collect in the event of our untimely demise...

I use a "book" (printed MS Word document in a 3-ring binder) to accomplish the instructions and help DD understand the how and why of my investing and withdrawing. It also includes how I plan to manage most everything in the aging process and points to the appropriate documents. It was originally written for my (deceased) wife so she could take over more that just entering receipts in Quicken and checking account balances. My DD uses Quicken too, so all the references to Quicken data and reports should not be a big hurdle for her.

 

[Derslickmeister]

I use a "book" (printed MS Word document in a 3-ring binder) to accomplish the instructions and help DD understand the how and why of my investing and withdrawing. It also includes how I plan to manage most everything in the aging process and points to the appropriate documents. It was originally written for my (deceased) wife so she could take over more that just entering receipts in Quicken and checking account balances. My DD uses Quicken too, so all the references to Quicken data and reports should not be a big hurdle for her.

Awesome, sounds like what Dave R. calls the "legacy drawer". Great idea.

 

[sengsational]

I came across this blog entry today about " How to Budget When You Hate Budgeting", that I thought was worth sharing. You can click to the full article on credit.com or yahoo finance (the link above has a bit more "truth" about using budgeting software).

Anyway, the author gets a lot of spending control by having less than everything tracked. He calls it "Budgeting Light" and has only six spending categories:

• Food
• Miscellaneous
• Medical
• Automobile
• His personal
• Hers personal

The author found that if he tried to manage every transaction, it got to be too much, and he quit doing it at all. You know, trying to get rid of / ignore transfers that are not really spending. And tracking the many regular predictable expenses really doesn't do much to help. So all of that is not part of this budgeting light philosophy. Not that you couldn't do that separately, just to keep the big picture, but the author says this philosophy is used "to become more mindful about our spending".

I don't use YNAB, and neither the author nor I are getting a kickback. I thought it would be a reasonable "community service" for me to mention that if you buy YNAB and put "marotta" in the "use my code" box, you'll get 25% off.